re: EE13 on the Test Server

These are the Preliminary Release Notes for Early Enrollment v13. We deployed a Final Candidate for EE 13 to the Test Server on Tuesday, August 8, and plan to deploy that build to Live during Daily Maintenance on Thursday, August 10, assuming that it performs well during testing.

What Is In This Release

This release adds multiple regular activities to the game, including Harvesting (gatherers find resource “gushers” that attract attacking creatures while being harvested), Raids (feuding companies can attack each other’s vulnerable Holdings to steal bulk resources) and Invasions (creatures from nearby escalations, or just from the hex itself, can attack Holdings to steal that day’s bulk resource production). There is also a new quest to help guide new players up to Tier 2 capabilities, as well as new Town Criers to help players find and join a settlement. And to help everyone get the resources they need, raw materials were rebalanced to better match equipment needs, and muleteers were added to all +2 or better Holdings.

A new premium item, Azoth, is available for purchase and can be used to improve the output of refining and crafting projects. Azoth can also be converted into months of game time, and can be offered for sale at Auction Houses.

There are also several other significant changes, including changes to the Auction Houses (a new Active Bids view makes it possible to view only those items with bids on them, and the default sales prices try to match those of a character’s previous offers) and the addition of Take/Transfer All buttons to Vaults and Inventory screens to make transferring multiple items easier. As usual, there are also many other smaller bug fixes and tweaks.

Full Release Notes

Harvesting:

When attempting to gather, there is a chance (based on gathering skill) that a Harvesting Node for one of that Gathering Node’s resources will be found instead. Placing a Harvesting Kit of the appropriate Tier (or higher) at the Harvesting Node’s location within 1 hour will set up a Harvesting Site that will begin harvesting resources immediately. Each character can only know about 1 Harvesting Node/Site per hex at a time.

Harvesting Kits (Expert’s for T1, Professional’s for T2, Master’s for T3) can be crafted by Engineers, and the recipes for those kits drop alongside other recipes as loot for killing creatures.

Harvesting Sites produce 1-5 resources (based on the gathering skill of the character who found the Harvesting Node) every 3-15 seconds (based on the tier and upgrade of the Harvesting Kit, as well as the tier of the resource being harvested) for 200 cycles. These resources are placed in a husk that belongs to the character who placed the Harvesting Kit.

While the Harvesting Site is operational, increasingly tough waves of attackers from the current Escalation Phase, or from any scheduled Invaders, or from the hex’s default creatures, will attack the site roughly 90 seconds after any previous wave is killed off. They will do damage to the site when nearby and outnumbering defenders, and the site won’t produce resources until the entire wave is killed off. If the site takes too much damage (determined by the tier and upgrade of the Harvesting Kit), it will be destroyed and the harvesting husk will disappear.

When harvesting is complete, the Harvesting Site will disappear and the husk will remain available for 4 hours, or until it is empty.

In hexes with Medium Security or higher, any character not in a party with the Harvesting Site’s owner will take a reputation hit for taking items from the Harvesting Husk and will be flagged as an attacker, allowing the owners to punish thieves.

If the attackers are from an Escalation currently infecting the hex, their deaths will count toward the Escalation strength like any other creature deaths.

Raids:

Companies can raid the vulnerable Holdings of other companies to steal that day’s bulk resource production plus 5% of any bulk resources in the Holding Upkeep vault. Holdings are vulnerable to Raids any day that their Outposts are vulnerable to being captured.

Raids only require an active feud, not a 48-hour-old feud like Capturing requires.

The husk resulting from a successful Raid has no owner, so every character will have to take items out of the husk slowly, just like they were pulling items from a husk someone else left after dying.

Invasions:

Creatures from neighboring escalations, or from the hex itself, can invade Holdings to destroy that day’s bulk resource production.

Hexes are vulnerable to Invasions on any day within a company’s PvP window. If an Invasion is scheduled, then any protection that hex is getting from allied neighbors is overridden for the day. However, the Invasion will only occur if the hex has Outposts that are vulnerable during the PvP window. If there are no vulnerable Outposts, then the scheduled Invasion will simply result in the Holding being vulnerable to capture that day.

Quests:

A New Player Quest is available in the starter area that will guide players through Tier 2 while sending them on a tour around the world. Characters that complete the New Player Quest are given an Aeon Stone as a reward.

NPC’s who offer quests that a character isn’t qualified for will state why they won’t offer the quest when interacted with.

Fixed some tutorial quest steps that didn’t know which NPC to provide a waypoint for.

Quests won’t point to center of hex when already in a suggested hex and there’s no specific waypoint to display.

The pre-requisite for the Escalation Tutorial was changed to Base Attack Bonus 1.

Town Criers:

Settlement leaders can set up Town Criers from the toolbox in front of their settlement’s keep. The Town Criers will appear in Thornkeep near the Auction House and beckon passersby to learn more about the settlement. When interacted with, they’ll extol the settlement’s virtues and offer an opportunity to join one of the settlement’s companies.

Town Criers won’t appear unless their settlement is running at level 14 or higher.

Gathering:

Rebalanced raw materials for gathering and harvesting to better match the demand for each resource. For resource in a hex that are now set to much higher numbers, their quality will temporarily be low until they regenerate closer to their new maximums per hex.

Resources regenerate much faster, ramping from a 50%-100% chance to regenerate by 1% every 15 minutes, instead of the previous 3%-100% (based on current percentage of that resource remaining in the hex).

Added T3 resources to 3,1.

Added T3 resources to -16,17 and -13,14.

Changed the Bonedancer Homeland to use the node percentages for Mountain hexes.

Settlements:

Thornkeep hexes have been set to a new security level called Absolute (not available for players to set). No PvP, not even for feuds, is allowed in those hexes unless the target has been temporarily flagged as an acceptable target, such as for attacking another character in a lower-security hex, or for stealing from a Harvesting Husk.

Rotter’s Hold is set to Low Security.

Coins don't get auto-deposited when opening a vault with Withdraw Only privileges.

Buildings:

Holdings upgraded to +2 or higher have a muleteer sign that can be right-clicked on to hire a mule.

Standardized the toolboxes at all buildings to make them more consistently clickable.

Fixed the occasional issue where the provided building site would switch to another nearby one as you got closer to the originally provided site.

Fixed the collision model for sawhorses used at various buildings.

Removed duplicate model from the shutdown version of the Loom.

Fixed shutdown signs on various structures.

Hexes:

Split the starter hexes around Thornkeep into two separate difficulties, with the ones closest to Thornkeep having the easier creatures (same as before) and the next layer out having slightly tougher versions of the same creatures. For example, the necromancers nearest to Thornkeep are still the same as before, but the ones another hex out are slightly tougher and include some new Necromancer Adepts.

Changed 3,1 to a standard Monster Hex instead of a Tutorial Monster Hex. The shrine there is now a standard shrine instead of a reputation shrine.

Changed the Hex Type for -1,1 from Badlands to Wild.

Changed -19,8 to Highlands, which was how all its resources were already calculated.

Changed 2,-5 to Woodlands, which was how all its resources were already calculated.

Changed 4,17 to Woodlands for Bulk Resource calculations, which will have altered its production and likely that of its neighbors.

Changed -13,0 and -18,8 to Highlands for Bulk Resource calculations. They’re Badlands hexes, but this change may have slightly altered bulk resource production for their neighbors.

Switched the default goblins in the Tutorial Escalation hex to more closely match the goblins from the Escalation.

Auctions:

A new Active Bids view is available from a new pulldown menu to list only those items that have active bids on them.

Default prices for offers are now based on the following (in priority order): active offers/bids, most recent sell/bid in transaction history, market history, and finally the existing default values. Some transaction history used for this will only start being recorded with EE 13, so some transactions placed in previous builds may not get included in these calculations.

Fixed an issue where player settlement Auction Houses might not hire out mules.

Azoth:

Boxes of Azoth can be purchased at the Store in quantities of 1, 3, 6 or 12 boxes. They are added to a specific character on login using the same method used for applying other premium items. Each box contains 700 Azoth, and is opened by right-clicking on the box in Inventory.

Azoth can be used to raise the output of a crafting project to the next plus. It can’t be applied unless the project is already at least 10% of the way to the next plus, and the amount of Azoth required depends on the value/quantity of the crafting output and the percentage remaining to reach the next plus. The option to add Azoth is displayed once the crafting project has all its ingredients added, and is reset if the ingredients change.

Azoth can be used to raise the likely hood of getting additional plusses on a refining project, increasing the odds of getting one additional plus by 10 percentage points and of getting 2 additional plusses by 1 percentage point. The option to add Azoth is displayed once the refining project has all its ingredients added.

Azoth can be exchanged for game time at a rate of 1650 Azoth for 1 month of game time by right-clicking on the Azoth in a character’s inventory.

When crafting with Azoth, achievements are only granted for the plus that would have been received without using Azoth.

Azoth has its own subcategory under Premium for vault and auction listings.

Items:

Aeon Stones are now twice as likely to drop as Event loot than before.

All Tutorial Escalation Events give out only the one-time tutorial participation achievement.

UI:

Added Take All and Transfer All options to Vault and Inventory windows, which work similarly to Deposit All.

Characters can set their alignment on the Character Sheet, in preparation for later features to be linked to alignment.

Tooltips for training Feats now show the Ability Bonus the Feat provides.

Only show the PvP icon next to the mini-map when in a hex that can be owned.

PvP information for protected hexes is clearer.

Added a /LogMessage command that logs out a player-supplied text string with the same header info as /LogVaults.

Added timestamp and character name to the /LogVaults headers.

Added Help Text for Blacklist UI.

Corrected display names for Moloch Knights found in the wild to match those found in the escalation.

Crafting recipes that can’t be upgraded to a higher plus (such as Aeon Stones) won’t show the “how close to the next plus” slider.

Dark Elf Scouts in Gathering of Legends no longer say whether or not they’re archers.

Fixed a typo in Boss Crusader achievement.

AI:

Any creature heading to its default location (e.g. leashing) will become vulnerable to damage if it goes more than 50 seconds without getting closer. They are also more willing to decide that they’re close enough to their default location, and therefore to go back to being vulnerable and looking for enemies to attack.

AI’s setting up their initial hate lists don’t grab nearby NPC’s.

Guards at freshly completed buildings no longer briefly remember their previous owner’s feuds and mistake their new owners as enemies.

Update 1:

Added a comment that some gathering resources will temporarily be at a low quality until they regenerate closer to their new maximums per hex.

Resources regenerate much faster, ramping from a 50%-100% chance to regenerate by 1% every 15 minutes, instead of the previous 3%-100% (based on current percentage of that resource remaining in the hex).

Beneficial feats will ignore Effect Protection.

Fixed the occasional issue where the provided building site would switch to another nearby one as you got closer to the originally provided site.

PvP information for protected hexes is clearer.

Last edited by Wxcougar on Tue Aug 08, 2017 3:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

re: EE13 on the Test Server

A Final Candidate for EE 13 is now running on Zog. I've updated the original Preliminary Release Notes post to reflect that, and also edited it to reflect the following changes/clarifications:

Added a comment that some gathering resources will temporarily be at a low quality until they regenerate closer to their new maximums per hex.

Resources regenerate much faster, ramping from a 50%-100% chance to regenerate by 1% every 15 minutes, instead of the previous 3%-100% (based on current percentage of that resource remaining in the hex).

Beneficial feats will ignore Effect Protection.

Fixed the occasional issue where the provided building site would switch to another nearby one as you got closer to the originally provided site.

PvP information for protected hexes is clearer.

In addition, the following fixes were made since the previous build that went up on Zog, but which weren't really appropriate for inclusion in the Release Notes since they're not about changes between EE 12 and EE 13.

Creatures attacking Harvesting Sites or Holdings now have separate team hate lists for each site they're attacking. That will keep creatures from one battle from trying to attack distant players involved in another battle.

The team hate lists for creatures attacking Harvesting Sites or Holdings are wiped between each wave. That will keep the creatures from focusing on the same players each wave, at least until those players re-earn that hate each wave.

The help text entries for the Sacrifice Azoth, Town Crier Management Window and Town Crier Window were hooked to the question mark icons in those windows.

The chance for neighboring escalations to attack a holding was reduced to 15% and for default creatures to attack a holding was reduced to 3%.

Box of Azoth shows up under Premium/Azoth alongside Azoth.

The Azoth crafting calculation now takes into account the character's skill bonuses instead of just the existing boost from using upgraded ingredients.

Harvesting production was doubled, with twice as many production cycles occurring over the same amount of time.